June 16, 2007

"But perhaps the most interesting observation was the very low level usage of the non-linear approach (and when it was used, how few slides were observed.) Is the linear orientation to looking through material so hard-wired into our media usage that it is, and will continue to be, the preferred way to take in media? Even when it was visual information – as this was – and did not logically need to follow a narrative thread – people preferred to move through in the order it was presented. What does this observation tell us about innovation in digital storytelling and our audience’s tolerance for new design paradigms."

February 11, 2007

Dueling web video projects from two of the old/new media powerhouses, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Both attempt to take a fresh approach to what we call 'journalism'. Both succeed in different ways.

First, earlier in the week, was 'onBeing' from the Post. Clean, simple and personal. Short stories of Washingtonians by Washingtonians courtesy great video interviews by Jenn Crandall and great interface design by Rob Curley and crew. It has proven to be one of the most successful pieces ever posted on washingtonpost.com.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine online features director Jake Paltrow's commissioned piece, 'The First Ones', interviewing some of Hollywood's finest. The format is again, very simple - one question, "what was the first film that made an impression on you?" The answers are short and sweet and artfully filmed (almost painfully so), and it works. The interface is nice also, allowing you to watch the whole thing or pick where to enter.

These two projects are not quite YouTube, but are also a nice step away from the TV-derivative stuff we are used to seeing from MSM. Hopefully we will see more like this; video journalism that starts to feel like the web is truly its home.

February 08, 2007

Every once in while something neat breaks through the corporate creativity firewall.

Washington Post videographer Jenn Crandall's onBeing takes a simple idea and brings it to the people in the Washington, D.C. community. Rob Curley and his posse provide an interface and user experience that is both familiar (can you say iTunes?) and fun!

November 21, 2006

A great case study of the dangers of unsupervised journalism in the multimedia age.

The Post (my employer), as part of its ongoing 'Being A Black Man' series, planned a fairly honest, 1st person account of unemployment for last Sunday's Washington Post newspaper and website. On that Friday, however, an excerpt and several photos from the story were published in one of the Post's other newspapers, Express, which is given out free at Metro stops across the D.C. area. A firestorm ensued.

In short, the excerpt and the photos were chosen with no input from either the writer or the photographer and, in their opinion, did not reflect the true nature of the story. The subject hated what he saw, and the public response went way beyond anything expected.

People tried to give the subject money on the Metro (he was on the way to work at his new job), he was ridiculed by family and friends; even his mother got into it, leaving an open copy of Express on his bed telling him this was why she did not want him talking to the reporter.

Some 13th hour tap-dancing by the reporter, photographer and their editors (of which I am one) kept the subject from pulling his consent and the story ran, in its entirety, on Sunday.

Now boys and girls, what have we learned? That the reach, in this media-hungry age, of all our content is broad and that all of it matters. Also, we must pay equal attention to our promos...if they look like content, they will be treated as such by the public - we need to do the same.

Lastly, media organizations need to think about having editors whose sole job is work 'in between the seams'; to monitor the flow of content from one platform to another, making sure it has been fully vetted no matter where it's scheduled to appear.

October 30, 2006

"Here's why this is important for those of us who don't want to stop reading (or, in my case, writing) in-depth, analytical news pieces: A significant number of the stories you read on the Web are created by the staff members at the dead-tree versions of newspapers.

....If the (New York) Times' Web site -- or any newspaper Web site -- were forced to hire a staff and fill its pages with only the revenue it made, it would look a lot like the Web site your daughter made for a class project. Except not as impressive." - Frank Ahrens, TWP

September 24, 2006

"That is what stays with me -- that he was cold under the balmy afternoon sun of Santiago de Chile, trembling as though he would never be warm again, as though the electric current was still coursing through him. Still possessed, somehow still inhabited by his captors, still imprisoned in that cell in the National Stadium, his hands disobeying the orders from his brain to quell the shuddering, his body unable to forget what had been done to it just as, nearly 33 years later, I, too, cannot banish that devastated life from my memory." - Ariel Dorfman

Daring to question from a position of knowledge; fact, not theory, seen first hand.
A beautifully written look into the eyes of torture and into the heart of our collective, national soul.

June 25, 2006

Nothing will bring the traditional newspaper back to its post-World War II position of media dominance -- not color printing, not kids' pages, not expanded high school sports coverage, not service journalism, not bingo on Page One. The newspaper habit -- which nearly every American had when it was the only mass medium -- must be learned. But younger potential customers have skipped the lesson and migrated to other media forms for edification and amusement. Newspapers attract fewer eyeballs today and will attract fewer tomorrow. ~ Jack Shafer, slate.com

My world, getting smaller and bigger at the same time. As the photographers of The Washington Post worry about the incredible shrinking news hole, they are also learning audio and video reporting in order to become the new media visual journalists that the future demands.